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Western Digital discriminating?

About a year ago, I bought a Western Digital TV Live Hub so I could watch my movies and hear my music in the living room conveniently from the sofa.

During the year I had the Live Hub I have had multiple problems. It randomly could suddenly lose the ability to browse the folder it just had played from, it could suddenly stop in the middle of something and claim it was no longer available, but be able to start it from the same point again only seconds later. It then had a problem with the screen saver disabling the network connection, then stopping the music because of that. I now got some problems with 1080p movies having the sound and picture offset a bit, but only when using the optical output. But as early as yesterday, Western Digital put a whole bunch of nails in their own coffin.

Netflix launched here, and everyone was excited because we now finally are able to watch movies and series on the TV, streaming it online, all easy and fast, PERFECT! But not with our Western Digital players. To quote them directly “The WD TV Live Hub will only ever get Netflix in the U.S.” and why is that? We got the exact same legal right to watch it as people living in the U.S. but apparently Western Digital seems to think that others are not worthy to be using such a service on their devices. And why is that? Netflix has been in the device for almost a year, but with the latest firmware they removed it, just before Netflix launched. I don’t see any logical reason for it, except it could look like they wanted to show what it was capable of, just to remove it again to show that THEY are the ones deciding what we are allowed to do with the device WE PURCHASED from them.

What I ended up doing was to find my four year old Nintendo Wii, and just a few minutes later I had Netflix running on it… My one year old media player, was beat on it’s own turf by a four year old gaming console…

So without any other explanation than “It will never get it outside the U.S” we just have to accept that they won’t let us use Netflix on it?

I feel discriminated.

Update

I think I found the reason why they removed the Netflix application from our devices… It turns out that they are limited by hardware, because they are too old, so even if the Netflix app was there, we could not use it.. Now this REALLY upsets me, specially because the suppliers here apparently have made to believe that they CAN be used with Netflix so it is on their pages under the specifications. On Western Digital’s website it shows the logos for Netflix on almost all screen shots too, nothing about not being able to use it by hardware limitation. Only clue they give about it is “Netflix is available in certain countries. Unlimited membership required.” when you look under their list of online services, but I read this as it only being available in the countries that Netflix are in, not that the player will only work in certain countries, and why would this be the only warning about that at all? I have been through all the pages with information about this player, not once have I found any message that warn me about not being able to use it with Netflix I even went into their FAQ section and searched and found nothing, not on the support page either.

The reason for not being able to use Netflix, according to Western Digital, is that the Live Hub is an old device and a lot changed since then. I wonder why it can still be used inside the U.S. with Netflix then? Time stood still there?

So not only did they sell a player without the functions listed, they also failed to give the dealers information about it.